The YF-19 should need no introduction at this point. Hell, we’ve done 4 other reviews of this mecha, and the background of it is pretty much well covered at this point.

I’ve been clamoring for a nicely done version of this since the release of the first Yamato YF-19 in 2000. That one was a noble effort, but the company was very much in its infancy at that time.

Here we are NINE YEARS LATER, and Yamato has taken another stab at this iconic Valkyrie, this time in a larger, 1/60 scale.

I have to apologize up front, I can’t show you the box for this. I had left it out in our living room and my son tore it up. So – no box for you. But if you have handled one box you have handled them all. Window box, cover flap, plastic tray etc.

The YF-19 comes packed with surprisingly few extra parts. In the package, aside from the ship itself, is the pilot, gun, two optional stand parts, and two extra fins. An instruction sheet and sticker sheet are also included. Not included with this set is a display stand, and optional fold booster and fast packs, which are sold separately.

Since the YF-19 comes packaged in fighter mode, we’ll start there.

In fighter mode the YF-19 measures in at about a foot long, which is impressive. The toy feels solid and has weight despite the lack of diecast.

The cockpit can open (in two sections) but you have to push down the black part in front to make room for the front window. This is not ideal, but it works. The small pilot figure of Isamu Dyson can fit in, but it’s a tight squeeze. The figure is quite rubbery so you should have no problems fitting it in.

Behind the cockpit are two fins that are hinged for the transformation process. These can bump out of place easily, so pay attention. There is a second set of fins included, so perhaps these are prone to breaking.

Further back, on either side are the engine intakes. In-package, the YF-19 has the intake covers on, so be sure to remove them for jet mode (I didn’t – unleash the hate mail!)

The only visible metal on the YF-19 is the landing gear. The front gear is located behind the cockpit and has the small metal flap in front (I think its for towing the jet) and rubber tires. Opening the three panels to extend the gear is a breeze. Not so for the rear gear. You need some kind of sharp object to pry open the doors, and then something to pry out the gear. The landing gear does not come out as far as it looks as it should, but the ship stays up so it must just be made that way.

To display the YF-19 with the Yamato Valkyrie Display Stand, you just clip on one of the attachments to the center fuselage part and attach it to the stand.

Transformation from Fighter to Gerwalk is very similar to the classic version, but I will let you watch the video to see how that is done.

It's worth mentioning that the first time I transformed this, I had held it by the chest area, and the whole rest of it detached and came crashing to the ground. The connection points where the chest meets the fuselage are just not strong enough to support the weight. Just make sure you keep a hand underneath the toy during transformation, and you should be all set. Its a sucky lesson to learn.

The YF-19 has a surprisingly nice gerwalk mode, with the additions of swivel joints just above the knees. It looks good, but I am let down by the fact that the chest assembly just rests above the body. There's nothing that it can clip into.

The YF-19 can also be displayed on the stand in Gerwalk mode.

Once again, refer to the video for transformation to Battroid mode.

Once fully transformed, the YF-19 is very impressive. Standing at about 13 inches tall, its the biggest valkyrie I own.

Articulation in this mode is equally impressive. The hips have a fantastic range of movement, and the legs have so much articulation that you can pull off a kneeling pose. What other valkyrie can do that?

One nice feature is the removable head armor, revealing the inner mechanism to the machine.

There are a few problems in battroid mode though - The shoulder pads are a bit loose and look ill-fitting, and the main one there is the way the nosecone is supposed to lock into place.

See, underneath the nosecone there is a panel with a tab that looks like it is supposed to lock in to a hole, but there's not enough of a peg on the tab for it to do so. This results in none of the top section really locking together.

And then there are the hands. As you can see in the video, I broke one of the hands during the transformation process. They just don't fit well into the forearms, and taking them out is an exercise in frustration. I popped the outer cover off on mine but was able to superglue it back on. Each hand has spindly little fingers that look odd on this model. Each has pegs in the hands to hold the gun, but due to the nature of the weapon it just doesn't sit straight. The hand doesn't grasp the handle tight enough, and the pegs really don't do much.

Lets see, what else can I complain about. Oh yeah, the hips don't swing out at all, nor is there any kind of waist joint.

Yamato has announced repaints of this valkyrie due out in 2009, lets hope they addressed the few QC issues in these releases.

I also have the armor and fold booster set, I'll tackle that in a future review.

What's always baffled me is the price of these things... almost $200... Ridiculous in my opinion, specially if it barely has any metal, and has design flaws!
I love Yamato's engineering (except for said flaws), but the only way I'd ever buy one of their products is if I could get it around 50% of the asking price.
Dude, $200 is a payment on a car... :-S

Look at things like MP Megatron, which is $100... how can you justify something that has a similar amount of engineering and metal, but costs around twice as much?

One word - volume. While TakaraTomy can make 100,000 peices of a masterpiece megatron, Yamato probably makes 5-10,000 pieces of a toy like the YF-19. The economies of scale state that the more you make, the less per piece it costs.

My friend gave me his YF-19 for review purpose and after playing with it for about two weeks before giving it back, I must say this is a nice Valk. And only nice. While I'm truly impressed with fighter mode, which is gorgeous, Battroid and Gerwalk not so much. Gerwalk seems to be a bit forced with his arms transformation and is simply unstable- unlike the VF-1 Gerwalk, where legs are secured with tight locks abobe the intakes, here we have a bit flimsy plugs in the sides where the ball joints are. So, while making his pictures, I had to squeeze to keep his legs from disconnecting from the main section.

Battroid has leg/torso proportions slightly off and this reminds me of RID Ultra Magnus. Also, the less tight the joints are, the less fun you have- "mine" had fairly loose joints, so posing him was a pain to the point I had to give up dynamic poses in his gallery, every time I tried him go kneeling he fell off to one side.

Actually, I believe you just have to kinda... pop the legs out, and you can get a wide leg stance. In any case, I've always gone back and forth on this design, toywise, and animationwise. I've never cared for the head in any of its iterations, but, as usual with Valks, my favorite mode is Gerwalk anyway. And in that respect, I always end up going back and forth between liking the way the arms come out and hating it. Regardless, this review is probably the best one I've seen for this toy as of yet, but I still don't feel the spark for it as I did at first, and unfortunately, never will feel enough of again to get one. Alas.

I agreed with JoshB on the ecomony of scale, however I don't think this is the sole reason why it is so expensive. I think often time people are over using the economy of scale to justify their prices. Have they not heard of economy of scope, which often time they have no clue of it?

Have we not forgotten the "re-issue" after "reissue" of chogokins?

What they are trying to do is push out a version of a product and try to make a quick buck off from it, then later re-issue either the same product or a different version of the product.

does it justify 200 for it? nope, not without alot of die-cast content.

Since each production run of a toy is largely self contained in terms of cost, the number of times it is re-issued has no affect on the price. Honestly I don't see where the YF-19 would immediately benefit from diecast content or how that justifies its price more so than plastic. It's a complex toy and requires are lot of work to make one, isn't that enough?

We all have prizes in our collections that we favor more than others or at least I do. I've been on a SOC buying spree and need to back-off Grandizer Reissue next. I think there the best quality of all my toys I attribute that to metal parts and how older robot toys like G1 Transformers had 'em I guess, and at the same time I can't really say that either because I own a lot of Japanese Transformers Galaxy Force all plastic but I'd never part with there too cool. Plus Anime PVC figures $80 and up and they don't even transform... So I kinda defeat my own argument in a way... A little bit of toy favorism at best.

As it has been discussed before the price scale for Valks is high no matter how nice they look, a little diecast would go a long way and these toys would be A+ with even a few metal parts. I stick the buying the chogokins & there re-issues and feel it's more bang for your buck feeling that hefty diecast metal toy in your hand. Toy collectables are hotter right now, more than I remember 15yrs ago so we'll most likely always buy more when they throw around words like limited edition, exclusive etc... that's marketing. The reissue thing is a no brainer supply and demand and the wants of collectors and we will buy if we like it enough plastic or diecast.

Good review Josh, even if it IS a bit late :P As a MWer, I feel obligated to point out that you ddin't mention or utilize the depressable panels on the inside of the calves, which pop out to fill a gap necessary in the leg for such a tight-fitting fighter mode. It was a necessary, and really quite clever (and maybe even close to 'realistic') solution to the fit back there.

The price thing is an interesting discussion, which comes up often with regards to high-end toys like Yamato valks. I own many a Yamato product, and a whole handful of Macross valks (I do not own the 1/60 YF-21 or a new 1/60 VF-1 v2 yet, but otherwise) and I have to admit, I have yet to have any real buyer's regret about my purchases. In Yamato's case, with them still being a relatively small firm, alot of the cost of the toy is due to the engineering and preproduction work and not necessarily the actual materials of the toy you receive in the box. In the case of Macross toys, however, I really cannot see how it could be any other way, especially with Macross toys past the venerable (and relatively simple) VF-1. Even the original 1/72 Mac+ line from Yamato were amazingly engineered toys of things that were considered just about impossible to render in real life (except for SHE, who used their typical MAGIC to make variable model kits of the designs). The materials argument is something else... I really do not see where alot of die-cast could possibly help any of the Yamato valk toys. Yamato has done a decent job of using the die-cast metal for high-stress parts like the narrow hip-bars (and shoulders on the new VF-11B) but major structural die-cast or even extra die-cast for the sake of metal would ruin these toys. Yamato toys, and indeed I say Macross designs, cannot be treated in quite the same way as say, a Super Robot from the SOC line, which can have die-cast metal pretty much everywhere in the toy. If most of say, the 1/60 YF-19 above was metal, the toy would be covered in paint chips and be completely unstable.m The original 1/72 Mac+ toys had some diecast, and especially on the YF-19, those toys are now riddled with paint chips. Even on the first 1/60 VF-1 from Yamato, the die-cast was more a problem than an improvement. I have recently 'seen the light' in regards to die-cast and chogokin toys and all that, and think it can help make a really durable and awesome toy, but Macross stuff just doesn't fit the trend.

Finally I'll chime in that I LOVE the 1/60 YF-19 toy. Until the new VF-11B came out, the YF-19 had my favorite Gerwalk mode of any Yamato figure, and I think it looks exceptional in all three modes. I had to tweak the tightness of the shoulder armor and the torso hinge to my liking, but besides that my only actual complaint with the toy is what Josh mentioned about the sliding torso mechanism coming apart. Otherwise, I think the toy is phenomenal, and is still one of my favorites. All of the other complaints I have seen honestly seemed to be simply a mix of people not reading the dang instructions right, and the nitpickers.

I've said this before, and might again; You paid $200 for a toy that broke under normal use, doing what it was supposed to. That sucks. I don't care what cool gimmicks or lights or transformations a toy has, if it breaks when it's being used the way it should be, or is broken out of the box, it's junk. Why and how do we keep telling ourselves that broken toys are acceptable for any price, much less hundreds of dollars? ...and I think the battroid mode is ugly, and looks kinda cheap.

Don't get me wrong, because you certainly are right in regards to some Yamato products that you pay alot of money for a toy that breaks, and that is unacceptable, but it's worth noting that the torso connection on the YF-19 is not actually a breaking thing... there's just a slider that is not a very tight fit and has a tendency to become dislodged if you twist it funny, but it is by no means broken and fits right back together. As for the Battroid mode, that's obviously a personal preference thing, but I really don't know what more you could do with the 19's Battroid mode and still maintain PT and the great look of the other modes.

I don't wanna disagree with you, seraph2011, but I think different toys need to be taken on a case-by-case basis. For example, *I* think it's inexcusable that the rubbery red Screw Crusher blades on the GX-04 SoC Grendizer forearms curl up against his upper arms when you bend the elbow. For other (sane) collectors, however, it's not a problem at all.

I don't have this YF-19, nor do I have any intention of getting one, but I would have NO problems at all with the hands because I like intricate, tightly-fitting transforming mechanisms. And I'm not ham-handed like JoshB! ;P [Granted, the chest not locking together solidly in battroid mode or just sitting loosely on top in GERWALK would be kind of annoying to me...but that's by design...not broken.]

Also, I happen to think this toy looks gorgeous in all modes...but that's just me.

But anyway, you also have to take into consideration the market and the companies involved. I think it's unlikely that Bandai will ever do a YF-19 and because I find their DX VF-25 pretty lack-luster, I don't think that if they did, it would be any better than Yamato's offering. So, if you're a big YF-19 fan (like JoshB), this may be the best game in town...ever (unless, of course, Yamato releases yet *another* design of it in 10 years!).

JoshB: "While TakaraTomy can make 100,000 peices of a masterpiece megatron, Yamato probably makes 5-10,000 pieces of a toy like the YF-19. The economies of scale state that the more you make, the less per piece it costs."

...that got me thinking, if more pieces means cheaper prices, then they should keep making them til they are free. Good idea huh?

Oh, haha... I was talking about Josh mentioning that the torso came loose from the slider and how that was a design thing and not broken. I glazed right over the bit about the hand folding out when I read the review.